Review #800: 'The Bad Sleep Well' (1960)

Akira Kurosawa's lambasting of Japan's post-war corporate culture, The Bad Sleep Well, is one of many collaborations with actors Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura and one of several of his film's rooted in the work of William Shakespeare. It's been somewhat unfairly overshadowed by the brilliance of those other films, but given the near-perfection of those movies, many of which regularly make those awful, generic 'top 100 movies' lists created by various magazines and websites, it's hardly surprising. But The Bad Sleep Well is one of Kurosawa's most ingeniously paced, clinically filmed and potently pessimistic movies.

Beginning with one of the most exceptional opening sequences in cinema, a crowd of journalists gather at the wedding reception of Nishi (Mifune) and Yoshiko (Kyoko Kagawa) attended by a host of corporate high-flyers. Yoshiko is the daughter of Corporation Vice President Iwabuchi (Masyuki Mori), whose company is facing scrutiny over suspected bid rigging and corruption. The press have gathered to witness the awkward toasts given by the various sweaty workers, delivered on a podium reminiscent of a witness stand. As the speeches are given, the wedding cake is wheeled in and revealed to be in the form of the corporate office building, with a single red rose protruding from the window in which Assistant Chief Furaya committed suicide from years earlier.

As a couple of higher-ups are arrested, Nishi steps in to reveal his plan of revenge. He has donned the disguise of a eager hopeful looking to marry himself up the corporate ladder, but is actually Furaya's son and has uncovered the trail of greed and corruption that led to his forced suicide. And all roads lead to Iwabuchi. Loosely based on Hamlet, The Bad Sleep Well is less faithful to the source material than Kurosawa's other Shakespeare adaptations. Working for the first time with his own production company, Kurosawa instead took the chance to voice his disgust at Japan's post-war capitalist takeover, where underlings are expected to take their own lives to save their boss's skin and back-hand dealings are less suspected than expected.

The title suggest something noir-ish, a genre Kurosawa is not unfamiliar with. But this has only brief shades of noir, and the title only serves as a warning of the grim pessimism smeared on thick throughout. At over two hours, the film is perhaps too long, becoming muddled at the points in which it should be tight and thrilling. But this is certainly a display of the director's formidable talent. The aforementioned opening wedding section is an expert mixture of comedy, tense drama and mystery, and was almost certainly paid homage to in The Godfather (1972). Mifune too, delivers a powerhouse performance as Nishi, stepping out of the shadows to become the beast he seeks to destroy. The climax may be too overtly bleak for some, but for the most part this is beautifully filmed, riveting stuff.


Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Toshirô Mifune, Masayuki Mori, Kyôko Kagawa, Takashi Shimura
Country: Japan

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #696: 'Ikiru' (1952)

As difficult as some Japanese films can be, Akira Kurosawa was always welcomed by Western audiences due to the director's embracing of the cinematic, as opposed to, say, the static, conversation-heavy work of Yasujiro Ozu. Still known primarily for his samurai action films and his film noir homages, Kurosawa's movies were action-packed and grandiose, shot beautifully through a lens that brings to mind the great American westerns or the shadowy mise-en-scene of Orson Welles, making them almost Western in tone. Ikiru, one of Kurosawa's most spiritual and tonally dark films, took a few years to make it across Pacific Ocean, and it's not hard to see why. Although, in my opinion, this is probably Kurosawa's greatest achievement, the subject matter is sobering, it's satire alarming and it's story-telling techniques unconventional.

The film opens with an X-ray of our protagonist, Watanabe (Takashi Shimura). The narrator tells us he has stomach cancer, but he does not yet know this, and so we join him, reluctantly, as he goes about stamping his papers in his stagnating job as a bureaucrat. Quiet and eternally hunched, Watanabe is an introverted man, spending little of what he earns to the frustration of his selfish son. When he learns that he has only about a year to live, Watanabe goes through the familiar stages of acceptance as he drinks, parties, fails to turn up for work, becomes involved with a much younger woman and angers his family. But he soon turns his attention to building a children's playground, a project he has seen passed around by the many pencil-pushers in the various departments within the council he works for, which has frustrated the residents of the decaying area.

It's with this shift of focus that comes the true masterstroke of Ikiru. Up to this point, we have been with Watanabe every step of the way, but suddenly, as the narrator informs us, he's dead. We no longer get the first-person perspective, but the third-person perspective, as various colleagues and political players gather for Watanabe's funeral. The film becomes less a human drama, and more of a social-political statement, as the other dead-eyed civil servant's in his office slowly come to realise the greatness of the man. The deputy mayor is there, claiming Watanabe's work was within the confines of his job and proving the bureaucratic machine works. This, of course, is simple electioneering, but the others reminisce and the truth begins to slowly reveal itself in the final months of Watanabe's life.

A lot of the film relies on the performance of Shimura, a long-time collaborator with Kurosawa. He is utterly magnetic here, remaining a hushed presence and developing his persona into a weapon to ensure his work gets done before he bites the bullet. In a heart-breaking moment, he croaks a quiet song in a packed bar for it to fall silent. The young hipsters slowly move away, while Watanabe's companion, a booze-addled writer, looks emotional. Kurosawa, only 40 at the time, was also making a comment on the post-war social outcasting of the elderly, embodied in the aforementioned bar scene and in Watanabe's success and money-drive son. Ikiru is many things, but it's the humanity of the story that will linger on in your mind after the credits have rolled, and it ends with one of the finest closing shots in history.


Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Takashi Shimura, Shin'ichi Himori, Haruo Tanaka, Minoru Chiaki
Country: Japan

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie